Archeology

Benito Mussolini, who ruled Fascist Italy from 1922 to 1943, had ambitious plans for the nation's capital. In the historic center he sought to uncover the remains of Imperial Rome, on which he modeled his new Italian empire, opening massive archaeological works and at the same time destroying many of the city's medieval landmarks. Outside the center Il Duce ordered the construction of whole districts in a new architectural vernacular that melded Roman classicism with stream-lined modernism.

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed.

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known farming village in Egypt, a 7,000-year-old site whose residents grew wheat and barley and raised sheep, goats and pigs. Farming probably occurred much earlier in Egypt, experts agree, but those first settlements would most likely have been along the banks of the Nile River and would have been obliterated by the periodic flooding and course changes of the river.

An ancient stone plaza unearthed in Peru dates back more than five millenniums and is the oldest known urban settlement in the Americas, according to experts here. Archaeologists say the site, uncovered amid a complex of ruins known as Sechin Bajo, is a major discovery that could help reshape their understanding of the continent's pre-Columbian history.

State Senate leaders chastised UC Berkeley administrators Tuesday for trampling on the civil rights of Native Americans by not returning the remains of thousands of their ancestors held in storage at a campus museum. Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the incoming Senate leader, accused the university of discriminating against Native Americans by keeping the bones and artifacts at the Phoebe A.

A fossil jawbone, rudimentary tools and animal skeletons from a cave in Spain extend the earliest occupation of Europe by human ancestors back to as much as 1.3 million years ago, half a million years earlier than previously believed, researchers reported Wednesday. The findings suggest that early hominids swept out of Africa, through the Near East and into Europe much more rapidly than previously believed, said Spanish researchers who reported the find in the journal Nature.

DNA from fossilized human feces found in an Oregon cave is 14,300 years old, at least 1,200 years older than previous evidence for humans in North America, researchers said Thursday. The find provides the strongest evidence in an archaeological controversy about whether people of the Clovis culture, which manufactured distinctive stone tools and weapons, were the first to populate the Americas. The new evidence, reported online in the journal Science, indicates they were not.

The technique of painting in oils was developed in Asia as long as 800 years before it appeared in Europe, according to a new analysis of murals found inside caves at Bamian in Afghanistan. Bamian became notorious when the Taliban blew up two colossal statues of Buddha there in 2001. The Taliban -- whose strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, forbids representational art -- also damaged ancient murals in many caves in the region.

It was early January. The team charged with stabilizing the scorched, slide-prone mountains above suburban Orange County had hiked for miles up twisting ravines when they spotted odd aluminum globules and jagged hunks of steel rooted in the earth. A U.S. Forest Service "smoke jumper" -- trained to vault out of airplanes into wildfires -- recognized the tangled debris. "Looks like an airplane wreck to me," he said. They pinpointed the coordinates and phoned Forest Service officials.

Scientists using radiocarbon dating have confirmed that an ancient Judean date palm seed among those found in the ruins of Masada in present-day Israel and planted three years ago is 2,000 years old -- the oldest seed ever to germinate. The seed has grown into a healthy, 4-foot-tall seedling, surpassing the previous record for oldest germinated seed -- a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.